Any one fishing the Red below the Dam? I'm headed that way on Tuesday and might take the Spey to swing clousers if anyone has caught something there recently.

Oh Man, these days that there fishery s s sa sucks, sooo bad, it is best just to dream about it.

Set the alarm for early, hit snoozebar repeatedly, and semi-regret that you didnt go.

This is the best advice.

Hey DC !

I would have to admit the last few times I went, I did not do so well.

Drove across it twice yesterday and there was little or no water in the river. As it cools off they'll start generating regularly and maybe it will pick up.

Generating is one thing. Dropping the lake level due to being overfull is one thing. Epic floods that dump fish from every orifice into the Red (below the Dam) are quite another. The good old days are just that, I'm afraid.

Until the next rainy season. It's not like it won't ever happen again.

If I remember correctly, it was 17 years betweens the last 2 times that water went over the spillway. So, it will probably happen again. But who is to say when.

I fished the Little Red in Arkansas two weeks ago. They said they were generating a lot more power than usual through the Greers Ferry Dam because, among other things, the lakes in Oklahoma and Texas were so low that they were generating less. So there may not be as much power generation as there usually is at Dennison.

OK, ever is a real long time. We have to admit, those events (huge releases or over the spillway) make a huge difference in the action below the Denison Dam don't we?

It doesn't take a spillway-topping flood event (only three in Texoma's history) to "recharge" the Red River with striped bass.

It does take a flood event that congregates fish in the lower end of the lake and causes the dam's floodgate tubes to be opened for several weeks at a time.

Back in the 1980s - a very wet decade - that happened nearly every spring for several years. There was some EPIC striped bass fishing in the Red River during many of those years. I saw guys carry stringers of five fish away from the river weighing 50+ pounds. You could go to the river and watch stunned/addled fish float by after their trip through the gates.

That kind of thing happened less frequently in the 1990s. And it has happened only a small handful of times this past decade.

And as is being discussed here, unfortunately, there hasn't been anything - floodgates or spillway topping - since 2007. Many of the fish that made it into the river then have been caught out.

Still some there - including some really good ones (a 41-pound striper was caught and released in the Red River this past spring) - but they are much fewer and farther between until the next flood event.